Tuesday

Miller Creek (2004)

On the Buller Coal Plateaux mining, both underground and open cast, has disturbed large upland territories, and has released into the waterways chemicals and minerals which would otherwise stay locked in the rock.

Most of the creeks and larger rivers that have the Plateaux for catchment, are badly damaged by these poisons, some to the point of being unable to hold any life.

Given time, and good management, some of these creeks are able to self-heal to some degree. This is the story of one of these waterways, Miller Creek, which flows from out of the Old Dip mine, through Millerton, at the Plateaux’s northern edge.

Spring is the longest season. It begins in August with the first touch of growth, the flowering of the coprosmas, and a noticeable warming of the sun, and it lasts until November.

Usually, these four months are long wet dark and cold. It is the wettest time of the year; there can be 500mm or more of rain in any one month, and fog can persist for days. Fine days are fairly frequent, but dark ones much more so.

It is in spring that we have most of our storms, of hail sleet and thunder, in alarming squalls which roar blackly out of the fog and threaten destruction. The house leaks, windows ooze, water lies or runs wherever it can, and mould does well. If you’re disposed to any sort of illness, now’s the time you have it, especially those of a neurotic kind.

Generally in Buller our rain falls at night, but in this season that rule is ignored and it rains whenever it can; There’s no such thing as a dry cloud. October is the climax, the month of wildness, and quite suddenly, at its end, the weather eases, sometimes abruptly into comparative drought. Most usually the unsettled conditions drag on into December, warming and drying appreciably but still decidedly wet, and intent on delivering our annual average of three metres of rain.

Now and then, to everyone’s joy, summer comes early, and November ushers it in from the very first week. Lawns can be mown, firewood dries, the garden can be planted again. You meet people in the street, and news starts to flow.

Through it all the bush has grown. The greenhoods have flowers, and the caladenias, clematis, the scented bush daisy, and the strange tropical-looking Parkinson’s rata. Birds nest, and the lesser animals have somehow survived. The Millerton snail, which has been restless for the last month or two, settles down, stops crossing the road, and isn’t seen for another year. Our world, now we can see it, is just as it should be, and grows on into summer as it has year after year.

Summer never lasts long enough. Down at the coast it does, and by the time it dies people long for cooler weather. Up here it can be relied upon to start by the middle of January, with temperatures over 20deg. four or five times in the season. Now and then it starts at the beginning of November, and this gives us four good months for seasonal work and recreation.

It is a comfortable time of the year, sunny with plenty of good night rains, and the bush grows tremendously, especially the pungas, which get battered about in the winter, and try to make good in this temperate weather.

Rainless spells rarely last for more than three weeks, and true droughts are very rare. Even one fine week is enough to dry the bush and raise a fear of fire, especially from the Burning Mine which is over the hill to the east, whose fire can be blown into the rushes and scrub by a dry wind, and from there spread further.

From late on a fine morning a sea breeze cools the day, and also might raise cloud on the tops with a shower or two, and mist at night. These can come quickly.

The season is used for work on the house — painting, waterproofing, and repairs, and on the grounds. The vegetable garden prospers from January on, being dry enough to work then and more insect-free. Fruit rarely sets on the trees because of the wet spring.

And the birds are about, especially when the rata flowers: the tuis return and sing in the tree-tops when the wind blows, fern-birds come into the town, young weka look for a place to live. Pigeons arrive when the broom flowers, and bell-birds are always with us.

We have the two species of summer rata — the southern and the northern, and at the end of the season the climbing white rata blooms. Around the very beginning of the year, in more open places and under manuka, the glorious blue sun-orchid blooms, and in march the hanging winika , and the easter orchid to add its scent to those others of the bush. Montbretia, belladonna, and the tiger lily bring the summer near its end.

•Autumn

Autumn drifts in imperceptibly, and leaves in the same style. There are bumps in its length; near the beginning there may be spells of still golden days, and there is the odd cold snap, most usual near Easter. Recoveries that follow these are never to the former state of warmth.

March is inclined to be mild and dry, and is fruitful, for the blackberries ripen (both the cutleaf and the common), the toro berries are purple for the pigeons, and the coprosmas are bright orange. At the side of the roads the kaffir lilies flower.

April is more significant: the poplars that have colonised the disappeared roads turn yellow, then slide into gold in May. There is often bitter weather near Easter, with a good deal of rain, and the toadstools appear with the wet—red mostly, but also green yellow and brown. A large edible brown mushroom grows in the grass verges near the poplars. There’s a black toadstool too, and another white and ragged like a carnation.

The first half of May belongs to Autumn, the latter half to Winter, with hail and sleet, and snow in the ranges. In early June there may be a brief recovery, for the ground hasn’t yet got thoroughly chilled, nor the house. The first half of June can be quite benign, but then the cold sets in. As a reminder of past comfort and a hint of the future, the shining rata begins to flower.

In fine weather, Autumn brings its own peace; the sky is distant, horizons have light behind them, and there are scents from the south as night closes in, with a whiff of Antarctica.

It is a directive time of the year, with power, and unless we do as it says—gather in and prepare to close against the hostile months ahead—we will pay for our negligence.

Winter comes slowly. There’s a cold snap at the end of May, when the winter rata flowers; it’s often stormy and with sleet, but the ground’s still warm, and the house. June is quite sunny until half way through, then the season starts to grip, our whole world is saturated, the hard frosts begin.

Or might do so. In some winters the weather is so unsettled there are only the lightest of frosts, and air movement at night from the high plateau to the coast allows freezing in the hollows only.

Now and then, however, this temperate pattern fails, the air stills, clouds evaporate, and the weather doesn’t move for a week or two. Icicles hang on the mossy banks and grow metres long. The frost accumulates until it’s like snow, and the road grows dangerous. In the hollows, where the cold air ponds, the soil freezes so deeply that trees die — rimu and kamahi in particular, but manuka too.

In such conditions it’s hard to run a house; the water stops running and the house is chilled in every part.

Snowfalls are rare, but snow is usually seen in a winter, driving in a southerly from over the hills, or in the hail. It’s often close, and when it comes floats in whisps across the moor, curling in the wind, and lies in thin white patches where it’s open in the bush. Higher on the plateau it quite frequently lies.

July is winter’s depth; the clothes the curtains and everything else in the house is cold and damp. Quite soon, in August, some signs of spring begin to show: birds busy themselves, ground orchids start to shoot, and the pungas unfurl new fronds. It rains all the time, and seems even colder. Strength to endure falters.

•

Published by Heteropholis Press

Further copies may be obtained from:
P.O. Box 367, Westport, Buller, New Zealand.

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About the Editor

I've published five poetry collections: City of Strange Brunettes (1998), Chantal’s Book (2002), To Terezín (2007), Celanie (2012), and A Clearer View of the Hinterland (2014), as well as six books of fiction, most recently Kingdom of Alt (2010). I work as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Massey University (ORCID ID: 0000-0002-3988-3926).